Gang life allure: Drugs, fast money, easy sex

Excerpt from a new book by Toronto Star reporter Betsy Powell looks at the Galloway Boys and other gangs in Toronto.

The cover of a book on the Galloway Boys by Toronto Star reporter Betsy Powell shows gang leader Tyshan Riley being arrested for attempted murder in 2004.

By:Betsy PowellToronto Star, Published on Sun Sep 05 2010

Youth gangs aren’t new to Toronto or to the rest of Canada. In 1940s Toronto, for instance, the Beanery Boys were a rough and tumble group who used their fists to get a point across.

But while much more dangerous gangs were being formed in the latter half of the 20th century, few in Canada were paying attention. One exception was Fred Mathews.

As a psychologist and program director at Central Toronto Youth Services, Mathews described the lure of gangs for young people in a 1993 report commissioned by the federal government. “They can obtain a sense of power, status, order, safety and communion with others — free from the scrutiny of the adult world,” he wrote in the report titled “Youth Gangs.”

Mathews had first-hand knowledge. He had lived in Los Angeles, the gang capital of the United States, in the late 1970s and early ’80s.

By the late ’80s, youth gangs in Toronto were being blamed for “swarmings” — a downtown phenomenon where a group of kids would surround a victim and steal money or clothes. It was around this time that Mathews “realized we’re on a trajectory of the American gang experience.”

During the 1970s and early to mid-’80s, outlaw motorcycle and Asian gangs, for the most part, controlled the cocaine market with a more affluent clientele that could afford $100 for a gram. But crack — an adulterated form of cocaine — was geared to a low-end market. Its arrival in Canada in the late ’80s was accompanied by the sound of gang gunfire.

Jamaica was an important link in the world of cocaine trafficking. As the United States clamped down on the cocaine pathways directly from South America, traffickers turned to Jamaica as a trans-shipment point, putting a new product into the hands of the posses operating there.

In 1991, a peak year for violence throughout North America, Toronto had a record 89 homicides, 16 of them linked to the drug wars involving rival gangs fighting for turf in Toronto housing projects.

One of the posse leaders ran his Toronto operation from a palatial house in Jamaica. “His bases of operation [in Canada] are a music store and a modest bungalow in a quiet North York neighbourhood,” the Star reported.

Toronto police Chief William McCormack said in 1990 that Jamaican posses were a “grave concern” to his force. But he also distinguished between organized gangs and other groups of young people living in housing developments who were using the name posse as a “scare term. These are simply young hoodlums,” McCormack said. This could have described some young men in southeastern Scarborough calling themselves the Galloway Posse. They were mainly involved in petty extortion, street-level drug dealing, theft and robberies.

Elsewhere in the city, gang violence in 1991 reached a deadly apex in downtown Chinatown as Asian gangs battled for control of the lucrative trade in drugs, plus gambling and extortion.

In 1997, Fred Mathews, appearing at a conference on youth violence, declared that street gangs had become “integral” to youth culture. “The problem will also get worse before it gets better,” he predicted, then warned: “Gunplay is becoming more common and young people are more accepting of others who belong to gangs.”

By 1998, Toronto police estimated there were 180 gangs in the city with varying levels of organization. But with fluid memberships, defining and identifying them was difficult. Some — though not all — gangs were violent. A Toronto police map from that time identified dozens of territorial-based crews, posses and gangs throughout the city, largely concentrated in poorer areas with public housing complexes. Many of the names referred to a neighbourhood or specific street. In northwest Toronto, there were the Jane Finch Killaz, Trethewey Gangster Killers and Rexdale Posse. Police identified more than 50 groups in downtown Toronto, including the Regent Park Posse, Christie Boys and B-Boys.

In Scarborough, the map showed a cluster of groups called “Kingston/Galloway,” the Mornelle Court gang and Malvern Posse. Some gang members identified themselves by wearing certain colours or clothing, or ball caps with the brim pointing in one direction or pants rolled up on one leg.

Robert Gordon, a criminology professor at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, found the motivation to participate in a criminal-business organization “is influenced by cultural and social bonds, marginalization from mainstream Canadian society, lack of resources and employment opportunities, language barriers, and possession of few marketable job skills.”

But perhaps the greatest allure was the money. Who wanted to work in a 9-to-5 job that pays a pittance compared with the earning potential of selling drugs? The bonus was that the sexiest women flocked to Galloway gang leader Tyshan Riley and his ilk. They shared women as if they were residents of the Playboy Mansion.

Yet there was no “luxurious lifestyle” in Galloway. On the surface, the gang members stacking cash appeared as poor as everyone else in their community. “Tell me anyone who’s living with a Jacuzzi in their house in that neighbourhood,” Roland Ellis, a Galloway gang member, would comment. Asked what he spent his drug profits on, Ellis said buying clothes and more pot to smoke.

But money brought something else. For those who embrace the gangbanging way, “the thirst for reputation,” even in death, is the purpose of gang members, Kody Scott, a former Crips gang leader in Los Angeles, wrote in his autobiography, Monster. “The principle is respect, a linchpin critical to relations between all people, but magnified by 30 in the ghettos and slums.”

By the beginning of the 21st century, many Toronto gangs identified themselves as Bloods or Crips, though there was little evidence of any association with the feared American gangbangers. Still, in some of the city’s toughest neighbourhoods, the colours of the Bloods (red) and Crips (blue) sent a powerful and perilous message. Wearing a rival’s colours in some areas could spell trouble.

In Galloway, gang members were less inclined to “beef over the Bloods and Crips thing,” Ellis would explain to police.

Ellis offered his view of what constituted a gang. It is a group of guys who don’t work, “they’re not doing stuff that’s sociable,” he said. “It’s not that there’s no organization. It’s just not organized—it’s not organized on a mob-type status or any type of like Gambino-type family. But there is people that sit down and discuss things before they do it, so there’s somewhat organization but it’s not to a high degree.”

While Tyshan Riley was still a Bad Seed in 2000-01, there were two main gang leaders in Galloway: Omar Lloyd Demetrius, known on the street as O, and Gary Eunick, who in 2005 was convicted of murdering an unarmed man in a suburban nightclub over a $10 cover charge. Eunick and Demetrius were the original leaders of the Get Mad Crew, a Galloway gang that sold crack and marijuana. Their tattoo was a “mad-face.” Their motto: “No fear.”

For young men lacking a positive male role model, Demetrius was an influential figure, prepared to step in whenever problems arose.

It was a different story on Aug. 21, 1999. Demetrius was at a popular West Indian takeout restaurant on Kingston Rd. Preferring not to wait in line, he started arguing with the counter clerk. Standing nearby was a man named Dave Jack. “Omar, don’t get yourself in no trouble,” Jack told the hothead, who shot back, “Dave, don’t say nothing to me, being like you is a big pussy hole.”

Jack left the restaurant followed by Demetrius, who pulled out a gun and shot him twice in the leg and once in the arm. An arrest warrant was issued but Demetrius had left the country and a leadership vacuum in Galloway.

He was picked up in July 2000 coming back into Canada under his own name. In November 2001, a jury convicted Demetrius of attempted murder. He spent several years behind bars before being deported to Jamaica in 2005. He snuck back into Canada — again — and in October 2007 was arrested for firing several shots into the air at a Scarborough restaurant.

By the time Tyshan Riley and Roland Ellis were teenagers, the “problem,” as the beef between Malvern and Galloway was usually described — like the “troubles” in Northern Ireland — was deeply entrenched.

“I have family that live in Malvern. They don’t even come to see me in Galloway,” Ellis recalled. “Nobody in Galloway likes nobody from Malvern, nobody in Malvern like nobody in Gall. Like, I go see my aunt in Malvern and she’ll be looking at me like, ‘What are you doing here?’ ”

For those involved in street life, it meant never letting down your guard. Ellis described it as being like a game of chess. “It’s just a plot, a game, it’s like checkmate,” he said. In the case of Malvern and Galloway, it meant tracking down enemy positions. One of the reasons most of the gang members didn’t have real jobs was because a rival could track their schedules — and “there’ll be dudes waiting for them” when they get off work.

Asked about the history of the “war” between Malvern and Galloway, Ellis paused and replied: “It goes way back.”